Providing decision support through visualization of participant past performance in an electronic commerce environment

A system for providing decision support through the visualization of participant past performance, comprising a computer system operable to:

• retrieve stored past performance information for a plurality of participants reflecting performance of the participants in connection with one or more previous transactions conducted using the marketplace;
• generate a plurality of substantially linear viewable objects for display to a user, each viewable object corresponding to a particular participant and comprising one or more subdivisions each defined by first and second subdivision boundaries, each subdivision in a viewable object corresponding to a past performance measure and having a length that is proportional to a value of the past performance measure determined according to the retrieved past performance information for the particular participant corresponding to the viewable object;
• receive user input selecting a particular past performance measure;
• and
• align the first boundaries of the subdivisions corresponding to the selected past performance measure, such that the past performance of the participants with respect to the selected past performance measure can be readily visually compared by the user in connection with a marketplace decision.

Software for providing decision support through the visualization of participant past performance, the software embodied in computer-readable media and when executed operable to:

• retrieve stored past performance information for a plurality of participants reflecting performance of the participants in connection with one or more previous transactions conducted using the marketplace;
• generate a plurality of substantially linear viewable objects for display to a user, each viewable object corresponding to a particular participant and comprising one or more subdivisions each defined by first and second subdivision boundaries, each subdivision in a viewable object corresponding to a past performance measure and having a length that is proportional to a value of the past performance measure determined according to the retrieved past performance information for the particular participant corresponding to the viewable object;
• receive user input selecting a particular past performance measure;
• and
• align the first boundaries of the subdivisions corresponding to the selected past performance measure, such that the past performance of the participants with respect to the selected past performance measure can be readily visually compared by the user in connection with a marketplace decision.

A system for providing decision support through the visualization of participant past performance, comprising:

• means for retrieving stored past performance information for a plurality of participants reflecting performance of the participants in connection with one or more previous transactions conducted using the marketplace;
• means for generating a plurality of substantially linear viewable objects for display to a user, each viewable object corresponding to a particular participant and comprising one or more subdivisions each defined by first and second subdivision boundaries, each subdivision in a viewable object corresponding to a past performance measure and having a length that is proportional to a value of the past performance measure determined according to the retrieved past performance information for the particular participant corresponding to the viewable object;
• means for receiving user input selecting a particular past performance measure;
• and
• means for aligning the first boundaries of the subdivisions corresponding to the selected past performance measure, such that the past performance of the participants with respect to the selected past performance measure can be readily visually compared by the user in connection with a marketplace decision.

A method for providing decision support to a user associated with a buyer through visualization of past supplier performance, the method being performed using a computer system associated with an electronic marketplace, the method comprising:

• retrieving stored past performance information for a plurality of suppliers reflecting performance of the suppliers in connection with one or more previous transactions conducted using the marketplace, the past performance information for each supplier comprising start and end times for each of a plurality of transaction cycle phases involving the supplier, the start and end times for a phase defining a duration of the phase, a transaction cycle comprising a sequence of phases whose durations collectively define a duration of the transaction cycle;
• generating a plurality of substantially linear viewable objects for display to a user associated with a buyer, each viewable object corresponding to a particular supplier and representing one or more transaction cycles involving the corresponding supplier, each viewable object comprising one or more subdivisions each defined by first and second subdivision boundaries that together indicate the duration of a phase corresponding to the subdivision, each subdivision in a viewable object having a length proportional to the duration of the phase corresponding to the subdivision and determined according to the retrieved past performance information for the particular supplier corresponding to the viewable object, the viewable objects being oriented such that each subdivision boundary corresponds to a time along a horizontal time axis;
• receiving user input selecting a particular phase;
• and
• aligning with respect to the time axis the first boundaries of the subdivisions corresponding to the selected phase, such that the durations of the selected phase for the suppliers corresponding to the viewable objects can be readily visually compared by the user in connection with a marketplace decision.